Chapter Eleven
She fought me.Never an easy conquest, my warrior queen, but I had ahold of her and wouldn’t let her go. The struggle roused us both to panting, the fire burning hot between us. I’d first seduced her by enticing her into a fight, earning first her respect, then her heated surrender.
It had been the end of a long and subtle siege. A brilliant stroke of strategy on my part, oneI had no qualms in congratulating myself on, figuring out I’d have to batter down those walls she’d built so long ago to keep anyone from hurting her again. Sometimes she came to me easily, with the soft kisses and sweet yielding of long familiarity.
Other times she insisted I fight my way through, proving to us both the intensity of our need—mine to have her, and hers to admit me to the innercircle of her trust.
With teeth and hands, I tore away her clothing and her reserve, driving her wild as I did, until I had her naked, all long-limbed, lean woman. My Essla doesn’t think she’s beautiful, but only because she can’t see herself as I do. Her long, elegant legs, her slim, rangy body, very nearly delicate, if not for the wiry muscles and the scars of many battles, like a tiger’s stripes,evidence of her ferocity. Pinning her, I took the prominent nipple of one of her small breasts into my mouth, locking it against my palate with my tongue and allowing my upper teeth to scrape her tender flesh.
She threw back her head, swanlike throat exposed, and arched her spine, crying out in her pleasure. The sound might carry through the open windows, but we’d both passed the point of caring.I slid down her body, tracing the lines of her rib cage, the narrow waist I could span with my hands, and lingering over the quivering muscles of her abdomen, still too hollow.
The scars there had faded extensively with the magical healing, but remained pinker than the older ones. Obviously not the work of a blade, the scars knotted like an exotic blossom, petals curling from where the High Priestessof Deyrr’s clawed fingers had plunged through Ursula’s flesh like melted butter.
“Harlan,” Ursula said, her fingers stroking through my short hair, all soothing and sweetness, battle fire forgotten. “I’m alive. I’m fine. They’re scars only.”
I looked up her long body, to where she’d raised herself up on one elbow to look at me when I’d paused so long. She regarded me with concern.
“I know,”I told her. “I tell myself that. All the time.”
She sat up, drawing me with her, stroking her hands over my chest and shoulders. Not to arouse this time, but in comfort. “I understand better now what it meant to you to be held helpless by the High Priestess’s magic, not to be able to act to protect me.”
My breath caught hard and agonizing in my chest, my heart straining with it.
“But it wasn’tyour fault,” she insisted, remorseless and intent, ducking her head to catch my gaze and hold it.
I shook my head slowly. “It feels like it was.”
“I get that, but it’s not real.”
“I swore to protect you when I swore theElskastholrr. I swore to myself that I’d never stand by and fail to act when someone was being wrongfully hurt.” The cries and broken weeping of my sisters echoed in my mind.They hadn’t begged—nor had they ever looked at me—but they had eventually wept. The whipping master knew his job too well.
Ursula’s mouth, hot and avid on mine, broke through the agonizing reverie. “None of us is invincible,” she murmured against my lips. “All we can do is our best. And your best, my mighty one, is astonishing. We’ve made it through fights no one should have lived through.” Shepushed me onto my back, divesting me of my clothes and following with mouth and hands, conquering me. Making me forget. “We did it by fighting together. You at my back and me at yours.”
Her hands found my rigid cock, gripping firmly, teasing in their feminine roughness. I caught my breath again, but in shock at the sheer rush of pleasure, my heart hammering now with lust. She straddled me, gloriousin the pour of afternoon sunlight, Danu’s chosen, and lowered herself slowly onto my cock, eyes erotically silver. So fierce and beautiful. Mine. I gave myself over to it, the sense of coming home, of her slick heat enclosing me, internal muscles clasping me.
“I don’t care about your vows,” she said, fully seated on me, unmoving. “Any of them. It’s not your job to protect me. We protect eachother. Take care of each other. Don’t leave me.”
“I never have. Never will,” I promised, my brain fogging, my control fraying. “What else do I have to promise for you to move already?”
She laughed, delighted, throwing her head back in utter ease. So far she’d come from the rigid and scarred woman she’d been, so afraid to touch and be touched. People did heal. They did survive to live. To livegood lives, despite everything.
Ursula rocked herself on me, a mischievous smile quirking her lips. Playful and pleased with herself. “You feel so good inside me, maybe I’ll just stay here.” She leaned to run her hands over my chest and shoulders. “Keep you here like this forever, for me to feast on.”
I’d let her, too. There was nothing I wouldn’t give her. “I love you, my hawk.”
“And I loveyou. I’m grateful every day that you found me, that your hlyti guided you to me.” Undulating her hips, her smile turned sensual, her internal muscles rippling along my shaft to shattering effect.
“Luta!” I growled, all control lost. Grasping her hips, I held her as I thrust up into her. Startled, she dug her fingers into my forearms as she convulsed, clinging to me for balance, as an anchor.I thrust again and she cried out, a soft mewl of helpless pleasure she never made at any other time. A sign that she’d dropped the last of her walls and admitted me to the most private, vulnerable part of herself.
Shifting to cup her head and brace my weight, I rolled her onto her back, savoring the way she wound her long legs around me, capturing me in place even as she gave over the rhythmto me. Languid with her surrender, she draped her arms around my neck, eyes half closed as she savored the slide of our bodies. She’d often told me she loved the press of my weight on her, the solidity of full skin-on-skin, so I gave her that—finding that sweet balance of being heavy without crushing her.
Watching her face, I adjusted the depth and drive, finding the ones that would unwind her,taking her apart bit by bit. Her nails bit into me as she climbed higher, legs grappling me, her body vibrating with tension. Silvery eyes glinting through lowered lashes, her face softened in need and love. If I ever doubted, I’d only have to watch her in these unguarded moments to see her heart and what it held for me.
My own climax gathering, I counted dynasties, an old habit to stall orgasm,accelerating my pace. She arched, convulsed, clinging to me as if she’d fall, crying out my name. Giving over, I followed her, driving myself into her sweet sheath, emptying everything I’d ever been, ever loved and suffered.
Giving it all to her.
Elskastholrr.
